


Nothing Worthwhile Is

by ophellos



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8329477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophellos/pseuds/ophellos
Summary: Or, 5 times Nate disappoints Elena and 1 time he doesn’t





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for emetophobia at the end of the fic. This is extremely unbeta'd because I'm a trash human being so I'll probably fix things as I find it.

They had both fallen silent, an angry silence that seems to blanket most of their conversations these days. Usually this is when one of them would hang up so that they could wait out the anger, text each other in a few days and sweep the argument under the rug. Elena is tired of the familiar dance and considering the silence on Nate’s end of the line, so is he.

“Look, obviously this—we—are not serious to you so maybe we should just…stop,” Elena says. She’s hunched over at her kitchen table, shoulders tense and head in her hand and eyes closed. She tries to ignore the shaking in her hands by gripping her phone tight against her ear. She’s not sure if it’s anger or something else, something she’s not prepared to deal with at the moment, but they’ve hit this wall once again and Elena can’t help but feel like they’re vaulting towards the edge.

On the other end of the line, Nate remains silent. Elena silently urges him to say something, say anything. Which is worse: If he agrees that this was just a fling or if he leaves it unsaid, uncertain.

There had been times when Elena saw something in his eyes, felt something in the desperate way he grips her hand or presses his body against her in his sleep. What was that if not exactly what she feels?

“Nate, please say something,” she says, voice so small and she hates how weak she sounds, hates that this is happening over the phone, hates that she can’t read him.

“Okay,” Nate finally says and she hears him inhale sharply. When he speaks again there’s a hardness in his voice. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

Elena wants to scream at him, wants to start a fight until he says what he’s really thinking, until he drops the cold voice. But that had never worked before and it’s too late because there’s a click on the other side of the phone and it’s over.

Elena tosses her cell down onto the table and tries to fight back angry tears because Nathan Drake, criminal and thief and terrible boyfriend—ex-boyfriend— doesn’t deserve them. Maybe she’ll let herself cry later when she’s in her empty bed or when she’s out to dinner with her friends and she has to tell them that they were right all along.

For now she has work and a quickly approaching deadline to focus on: two articles to write, and another to edit. She pulls her laptop towards her, and stares down at her word documents, drumming her fingers along the table. Instead of beginning to type she reaches for a bulky folder that sits on the table and begins to page through the documents, stopping to stare down at the headshot of Zoran Lazarevic. If there’s one thing that can take her mind off of her own life, it’s a fugitive war criminal. Everything else can wait.

 

* * *

 

When Elena finally spots Nate navigating his way through a sea of her coworkers, she heaves a sigh of relief. He’s an hour late, but at least he’s here. A small part of Elena had been scared that he just wouldn’t show up at all; the last few months had been strained and when Elena left earlier, he had barely taken his eyes off of his research to acknowledge her goodbye and only grunted when she reminded him that the event was formal.

As Nate approaches, Elena realizes that it was a mistake to assume he had been listening to her because he’s still in the same clothes as he was when she left. Nate smiles down at her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he looks completely out of place in his t-shirt and jeans. People are glancing at him, people Elena knows and respects, people she hopes also respect her. Up close, she can see the stubble on his face. 

“Sorry I’m late. Got distracted by early 15th century medicine.” When Elena just stares at him, he glances down at the slim cocktail dress Elena had bought just for this night. “Wow, you look nice,” Nate says, flashing a charming smile. “You weren’t wearing that earlier, were you? I would have noticed that.”

“I changed when I got here,” Elena says, waving her hand to indicate it wasn’t important. “Nate, I told you this was a black tie kind of party!”

Nate just shrugs. “I forgot.” 

Elena rubs at her temples and takes a second to breathe because the only way that this situation would be worse is if she got into a fight with her inappropriately dressed husband at a work party. “Okay,” she says slowly. “I’m going to go get some wine from the bar and then we’re going to do everything we can to avoid my boss.”

 

* * *

 

Elena squeezes her eyes shut and puts her hands over her face as she recalls the events of the night before. There had been shouting and slamming doors and Elena had ended the fight abruptly by stomping to their bedroom and crawling angrily into bed. She remembers Nate coming into the room briefly an hour or two later, remembers squinting and rolling over when he turned the light on in their closet. She fell back asleep quickly, hoping it meant that Nate was coming to bed, hoping that she would wake up in his arms and that they would forgive each other.

She glances at Nate’s empty side of the bed and sighs because he must have gone to sleep on the couch again last night, probably clutching a history book to his chest. It seems like that happens more often than not these days.

Elena groans and gets out of bed to check if Nate is awake yet. She finds the couch as empty as the rest of the apartment, and she doesn’t think much of it at first, telling herself that maybe Nate was at the library chasing a new lead on Sir Francis Drake. She gets halfway through making breakfast before she notices that Nate’s laptop and books are no longer cluttering the small dining room table like they have been for the last three months. She pauses, spatula hovering over her fried egg and feels her chest constrict. 

She checks Nate’s bedside table and his journals are gone. She checks under the bed and his gun is gone. She checks in the closet and his clothes are gone.

With shaking hands, she dials Sully’s number.

“Elena,” he says and she can tell from the tone in his voice that she was right.

“Is he there?”

Sully sighs. “He’s passed out in the spare room,” he says. “Showed up at seven in the morning reeking of whiskey.”

Elena closes her eyes and sits down heavily on the couch. “He’s not coming back, is he?”

Sully is quiet for a moment. “Darlin’, he’s not thinking clearly right now. Nate’s an idiot but he loves you.”

Every argument, every fight is passing through Elena’s mind like a slideshow of her biggest mistakes. They got married too soon, just months after returning from Shamballa. They were too scared of losing each other again that they ignored the nightmares and the PTSD and jumped into the next phase, desperate for something to tie them more securely together this time. They had been happy for a time, but inevitably the excitement wore off and Nate poured himself into the next project. Elena fell into the background, only breaking through his attention when they screamed at each other.

“Give him a few days, Elena. He’ll figure out the mistake he’s made and come back.”

Sully is wrong and three weeks later, he appears at her door, avoiding her eyes and muttering guiltily about picking up the rest of Nate’s belongings.

 

* * *

 

The glow of the screen reflects in Elena’s eyes as she crosses and uncrosses her arms, chewing on the inside of her lip. In her lap, her computer hums faintly and a window pops up, warning her that her battery is low. She dismisses it and then sits back again, drumming her fingers on her leg. She has sat like this for at least an hour, information typed into all of the boxes on the website, mouse lingering over the ‘submit’ icon.

Elena loves Nate, she loves him and she trusts him. But she also knows Nate, can tell when he’s lying, can tell he misses his old life, can tell that he’s anxious and bored and caged into this domestic life they’ve built for themselves.

She takes a deep breath and hits the button, leaning forward to gaze down at the map that loads, watching the website animation as it drops a pin into it. 

_King's Bay, Madagascar._

She lets out the breath that she’s been holding and puts her laptop on the cushion next to her, standing up. She begins to pace, her mind racing to try and rationalize this: maybe she typed in Nate’s phone information wrong; maybe the website algorithm was unreliable; maybe someone stole Nate’s phone and was on the run; maybe the wreck in Malaysia had turned up something that led them to Madagascar. Each explanation was more ridiculous and desperate than the last.

She crosses the room and grabs her laptop, pulling up the latest news stories for King's Bay, scanning the headlines for anything unusual. It doesn’t take her long to find an article that mentions Shoreline, a large mercenary army that had come across her radar once or twice when she was still as investigative journalist.

It’s not a confirmation of anything, not solid proof that Nate is really there, that he lied to her and has regressed to his self-destructive, reckless, dangerous old habits. But it feels like the nail in the coffin and Elena quickly opens up a new window and looks up flights to King's Bay.

 

* * *

 

Elena lets the hotel door slam behind her as she bursts into the hot evening. She is moving quickly, scrubs at her face to rub away her tears.

It was way worse than she had thought. The lie about Malaysia wasn’t the tip of the iceberg; it was just a layer of ice sandwiched between bigger and heavier lies that stretched throughout their entire relationship.

_This is Sam Drake, my brother._

Nate has always been a terrible liar. She has said it a million time, in anger and in laughter, during fights and during giddy flirting and during slow lovemaking. The man wears his heart on his sleeve and lets every emotion and thought cross over his face, a far cry from the mysterious stranger she thought he might be when they first met.

And yet there was no clue over the years that Nate had a brother. If he can keep this secret, what else can he do?

Elena is leaning against the building outside the doors of the airport with her eyes closed when she feels someone settle against the wall inches away from her. She turns to tell them off and there is Sully, lighting a cigar.

She huffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not in the mood to talk,” she says.

Sully only nods and continues to smoke. Silence falls over them for a few minutes and Elena’s mind wanders to the news footage she had seen when she stepped off the plane: historic monuments and sites destroyed and heavily armed car chases ripping through the city. It was the moment that confirmed for Elena that Nate was there.

“They’re going to get themselves killed, aren’t they?” she asks at last, looking at Sully out of the corner of her eyes.

Sully chuckles. “Well considering that Sam and Nate seem to be locked in a constant battle of each one proving himself to be more reckless than the other, I’d say it’s a good possibility.”

Elena sighs. “We’re going to have to go after them,” she says.

“That’s my girl.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, for Christ’s—”

Elena looks up from the book she had been engrossed in and suppresses a smile when she sees Nate stalk into the room, vomit down the front of his shirt. He is carrying Cassie on his hip and she looks as happy as can be, blowing bubbles with the spit up dripping down her chin.

Nate wrinkles his nose at Elena. “Our daughter just ruined both of our outfits,” he complains, moving over to the changing table, where he lays Cassie down and starts to change her into clean clothes. “I’m glad _you_ find this so amusing,” he says in a playful voice, fingers tickling into Cassie’s tummy as she giggles.

Elena smiles as she watches them, watches the gentle way that Nate pulls her chubby arms through the sleeves and wipes her face with a rag, dropping a kiss onto her tiny nose. He rubs at the stains on his shirt and stares down at them before shrugging and picking Cassie back up.

He settles carefully down on the bed, cradling Cassie in his arms as he lies back before sitting her on his stomach, back propped up by his legs. Nate makes faces at Cassie, who watches him with fascination.

Its moments like these that Elena can’t tear her eyes off of her family. She repositions herself so that she can lean against Nate’s shoulder, her book long forgotten. There is no trace of the longing looks into the distance, no trace of the scared, trapped thoughts that sometimes crossed his face before they began their company. They’re both happy and content and together.


End file.
